Whistler

Photo: Studio Incendo Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution via Flickr

OUR VISION

Half of the world population still lives under oppressive regimes lacking basic human rights. Technology and expanding connectivity have given hope and empowered millions across the world to demand social and political change.

Unfortunately, the same technology and open networks are exploited by authoritarian governments to surveil and prosecute journalists, protesters, democracy activists, and LGBT bloggers.

Behind Whistler is a vision to make security accessible by integrating critical tools and training resources into one single hub, available to anyone for free. We hope to empower journalists and democracy activists to safely connect in creating change.

IN THE NEWS

The team begins building Whistler, an app dedicated to helping activists and citizen reporters

The curriculum that Popović has developed with Canvas has served as a blueprint for activists in countries including Iran, Zimbabwe, Ukraine, Palestine, Belarus, Tunisia and Egypt. And the organization took its mission a step further by providing a virtual curriculum for students globally through an initiative developed in conjunction with Harvard.

Whistler brings all of that to mobile phones through an app that takes advantage of all of the phone’s features as an audio and video recording device, as well as its Internet connectivity.

“During the Arab Spring, everybody was talking about how the social networks were used for organizing,” said Popović. “Now we are facing this reversal, because the bad guys are learning as well. They’re learning how to restrict your access to the internet, how to surveil you, how to track you down.”

Whistler, which is still in development, will have four key functions: secure messaging, reporting and file sharing, educational materials for nonviolent movements, and a panic button to erase files in case of illegal detention.

Around the world, thousands of citizen activists have turned to the Internet and social media as tools to expose oppression and organize non-violent resistance to incredibly violent regimes.

However, many of these tools leave their users exposed to potential acts of reprisal from the very powers they seek to challenge.

Whistler aims to change that.

TEam

Srdja Popovic sits down with 533DZ Foundation CEO Nico Sell to discuss Serbian political resistance, the importance of secure communications to human rights activists, and how to pronounce a name with four consonants and just one vowel. Srdja Popovic was one of the founders and key organizers of the Serbian nonviolent resistance group Otpor!

The Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) is a non-profit focused on education & training of activists around the world about nonviolent movements.